I’m Already So Fatigued—Will It Really Get Worse as a Parent?
I turned off the car and sat in the driveway for a minute. My daughter was already out of her booster seat by the time I opened the door, shoes in her hand, asking if we could have pasta for dinner. It was the third time she had asked since we left school. I said “I don’t know yet” in a voice that came out flatter than I meant, and she went quiet. I stood there with the grocery bag, one strap slipping off my shoulder, and thought: I’m already so tired. Everyone says it gets worse. Does it?
I first heard the “just wait” warning when she was a baby. A woman at the pharmacy saw me buying diaper cream with dark circles under my eyes and said, “Oh, you think you’re tired now? Wait until she’s older. The sleep deprivation is actually the easy part.” I laughed, because what else do you do, but I thought about it for days. That comment followed me around like a stray cat. When she turned three, I heard it again from a dad at the playground. “Let me know when she starts school. That’s when the real tired starts.” Now she’s in first grade, and the homework is mercifully one worksheet, and the only activity is a Saturday soccer game. And I’m still tired.
Not the same kind of tired, though. When she was small, the exhaustion was physical. My shoulders ached from carrying her. My eyes burned from waking up every two hours. I could feel the tiredness in my bones, like it had seeped in overnight and settled there. This time it’s different. I get seven hours most nights. I even manage to drink a cup of tea before it goes cold. But my mind feels like it has sand in it by 4 p.m.
I think the problem is choices. There are thousands of tiny decisions in a day, and most of them are about her. What’s for dinner? Do we have enough apples? Can she wear the sparkly shoes even though they’re on the wrong feet? Can I have a friend over? Why not? When is the library book due? Where did you put the other sock? Each one is small. But small things, one after another, are heavy. By the evening, the smallest question can feel like a hurdle. She asked me the other day if she could draw on her arm with washable marker, and I said “yes” too quickly, just to end the conversation. Then I said “no” five minutes later because I realized she meant her new shirt, too. She looked confused. I was confused. Exhaustion had hollowed out the pause I needed to actually think.
I remember the moment I realized I wasn’t just tired—I was shutting down. It was after dinner, and she was stalling in the bath. She kept moving the same orange boat from one hand to the other. I said, “Just pick one. It doesn’t matter.” Her face went still. She wasn’t trying to annoy me. She was trying to tell me something about the boat and the whale that she’d arranged in a certain way. I had forgotten how to listen, because listening felt like one more task. When I saw her face, I apologized, and she said “It’s okay, Mom,” in a voice that made me feel worse. That night I lay awake wondering: if this is how tired I am now, what happens when she has homework and tests and friendships that break? How will I hold all of that?
I couldn’t answer it. But I started changing how I operated, not how much energy I had.
A teacher friend once told me that kids don’t learn to make good choices by being given unlimited options. They learn by making choices within safe limits. The same is true for me, apparently. I stopped asking open-ended questions when I was already depleted. Instead of “What do you want for dinner?” I started saying, “Do you want pasta or rice?” Instead of “What should we pack for snack?” I said, “Apple slices or cheese stick?” It sounds ridiculously small. But it cut the number of decisions in half. She still gets a choice. I just don’t have to invent the menu from scratch at a moment when my brain is full.
I also started writing things down. We have a small whiteboard on the fridge now. After dinner, I write three things for tomorrow: what we’re having for breakfast, what she’s wearing, and one thing we can’t forget. It takes two minutes. It stopped the 11 p.m. “Oh, tomorrow is picture day” scramble. More importantly, it stopped the guilt spiral. When I forgot something, I used to tell myself I was a bad parent. Now I tell myself the system failed, and then I fix the system. It’s not a huge difference, but it keeps me from feeling like every mistake is a character flaw.
One phrase helped me more than I expected. When she asks for something and I can’t decide, instead of snapping, I say, “I can’t think about that right now. Put it on the list, and we’ll decide after dinner.” Sometimes I literally write it on the list, even if it’s something silly like “draw on arm with marker.” My daughter likes seeing her words on the whiteboard. And I like knowing I don’t have to carry every request in my head. It’s a small shift, but it changed the way we talk to each other at our lowest-energy hour.
I used to think the answer to exhaustion was better self-care: go to bed earlier, take a walk, drink more water. All of that is fine. But the fatigue I’m feeling now isn’t going to be solved by a nap. It’s attention fatigue. It’s the mental wear of having to respond to another person’s needs constantly, all day, for years. Telling someone who is mentally depleted to simply rest more is like telling someone with a leaking roof to just sleep until the rain stops. The real fix is reducing the number of leaks.
I don’t know if it gets worse. I suspect some parts will. Middle school has its own weather, and I’ve heard the storms. But I also notice the tiredness is changing shape. When she was two, I was exhausted in my arms and legs. Now it’s mostly in my head, and that means I can do something about it. I can make fewer choices ahead of time. I can write things down. I can say “I can’t decide right now” without feeling like I’m failing. I can let her have the red socks even if they clash, because it’s one less decision for me and one more safe choice for her.
Last night we had pasta, because I had written “pasta” on the whiteboard the day before and didn’t have to think about it. She ate it cold, straight from the strainer, standing on her stool. I watched her for a moment and didn’t feel tired. Just a small gap, maybe six minutes. Then I did feel tired again. But six minutes counts. I’m learning to take them where I can.
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